Summary

This eerie biography tells the truth about John Lennon's final days in the Dakota. New York City journalist Robert Rosen is a Lennon Expert who had an exclusive feed for information from Lennon's own personal assistant. In 1981, five months after his murder, Rosen was even given the ex-Beatle's private journals. He spent months studying the now-lost Lennon Diaries, but was barred from writing about them, until now. Nobody has ever heard this unique perspective: Lennon on Lennon.

Booklist Review

According to Rosen, John Lennon spent his last days in paranoiac isolation, searching for methods of divination and paranormal powers while sharing addiction to heroin with Yoko Ono. Did the abrupt hiring and firing of employees (a former employee is among Rosen's sources), bizarre applications of astrology and numerology, and so on really happen as Rosen describes them? Who knows? And who cares? In the wacky entertainment world, tabloid rules rule. So Rosen likens Lennon to Jerry Garcia, responding to the constraints of stardom with paranoia, inertia, and drugs. This induces considerable respect for Keith Richards' relative decorum. There are rock star bios that amaze with their fealty to relatively mundane subjects, and rock star bios that amaze with the degradation they allege in the lives of erstwhile media darlings. Rosen's is one of the latter, comparable to Peggy Caserta's Going Down with Janis (1973) or almost any Jim Morrison book. It shouldn't be any library's only Lennon resource, yet as an entertainingly salacious accessory, it is scrumptious. --Mike Tribby

Library Journal Review

In his introductory first chapter, Rosen says, "This book, Nowhere Man, exists because in May 1981 my friend gave me John Lennon's journals." He describes the all-consuming task of transcribing the diaries, but then distances the book itself from them by saying, "This book is a work of both investigative journalism and imagination." Rosen's admission should make anyone hoping it will be an authoritative account of John Lennon's "house husband" period in the late 1970s suspicious. Rosen tries to shatter the popular image of Lennon as a devoted father and house husband, but the worst he can dish out is that Lennon was an unhappy eccentric who spoiled his son, got angry at his servants, binged on junk food, and liked spending money, getting stoned, and masturbating. In other words, Lennon was human. The same story has already been told in Albert Goldman's The Lives of John Lennon (1988. o.p.) and in Fred Seaman's The Last Days of John Lennon (LJ 11/1/91). A more positive, if superficial, account of Lennon's retirement years can be found in Ray Coleman's Lennon (LJ 6/1/85). Not recommended. [The publisher asserts that "contrary to what you may have seen from irresponsible reports in some media, nowhere in the book, or in any publicity material issued by Soft Skull Press or Mr. Rosen in connection with the book, is the book inferred in any way, shape or form, as based on the diaries of John Lennon, or any other material owned by the Estate of John Lennon."--Ed.]--Lloyd Jansen, Stockton-San Joaquin Cty. P.L., CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

SD_ILS:1063599

9781887128469

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